Was this the man she had fallen in love with? The entire day had been bizzare, including Hans’s story of the wrong phone number. And now this drunken phone call? It seemed crazy. What was going on? She lay awake, trying to make sense of what was happening until finally she rolled over and fell asleep.
*
When he woke the next morning, Hans was embarrassed. He would have to wait to call Sue when she returned from school late in the afternoon. It was just after five o’clock when he reached her.
“It isn’t even flattering,” she said coolly. “To have someone telephone when they’ve been drinking to make sexual allusions.”
“I’m really sorry,” he said. Rusty nuzzled at his knee. He heard Sue sigh.
“I’ll see you at the restaurant tomorrow,” she said.
“All right.” He wondered how he could tell her he could not stand the tension, that he could not go on seeing her. He tucked his fingers under Rusty’s ear.
“What do you think I think when you don’t call? What do you think that’s like?” she asked. “And then you get drunk and insult me.”
“I said I’m sorry.” He wondered if he were more worried about his marriage or that he could not live up to her husband, that there would always be a ghost between them. “I feel guilty about having become involved with you,” he said. “I’m just a basket case. Why would you even want to hear from me?” He was convinced of what he said, but when he heard it out loud, he hated that he was almost whining.
“Well, that’s a good question. But I do want to.”
Oh Lord, he thought. He could remember every line in her body and their hunger when they had been together. He could not resist. “So could I see you tonight?”
“Tonight?”
“Uh-huh.”
“All right.”
“I’ll grab a chariot.” He would change and have a quick bite and be right over.
“Where are you coming from?” Sue asked.
“The country. The drive takes just under an hour.”
She did not ask who would feed the horses.
By seven, he was at her door. He let the knocker fall lightly. Tap, tap, tap. She did not answer. It felt as if this might be retribution, driving down the highway to find an empty house. He went back onto the sidewalk and looked up at her window. There was not even a light anywhere, but as he stood and wondered what to do, the front door opened. She beckoned to him and he cleared his throat, suddenly nervous again.
“Hello,” he said, walking across the grass.
Once inside the door, he put his arms around her. Then he backed away. He was suddenly so uncomfortable that he wanted to turn and run. He wished he were back at the farm. It had been exciting before, but the allure of the mysterious had disappeared and there was more at stake now.
“I think I’d better drive back tonight,” he said. “I didn’t make any arrangements for the animals.”
“Do you have to leave right away? You’ve scarcely arrived.”
“No,” he said. “But fairly soon.”
“C’mon up to the studio,” she said. “Let me show you what I’m working on.”
He followed her, determined that he would not initiate or get drawn into anything. He was surprised to see a huge cockroach in bright colours on the canvas on her easel.
“This is something new,” he said, looking more closely.
She told him how she had been drawn to these insects. “They seem to have a life of their own. They’ve turned into canvasses that would only interest some dealer or collector with eccentric taste.”
“There’ll be someone.”
“Is that psychic knowing?”
He looked down and noticed he had a hole in his sleeve. His stomach would bulge slightly over his belt if he raised his hands over his head and his sweater would rise also. She turned to look at him. “Do you have others?” he asked.
She pulled out a few sketches and another painting.
“What about the perspective?” she asked.
He picked up a charcoal pencil and began to draw a ladybug on a sheet of sketch paper. “See the shading on the body. And on the ground behind it.” He began to relax as the lines flowed.
“I don’t get that very well, do I?’
“I wouldn’t say that. You’ve only missed a stroke or two.”
“Let me try.” She drew another bug and highlighted it.
He stood behind her, smiling. “Way to go.”
As they walked downstairs, she asked if he would like a cup of coffee.
“No, but let’s sit for a few minutes in the kitchen,” he said. “It was a bit of a rush to get here.” Something reverberated through him that seemed to portend some insight. He ignored it.
“On Saturday I marched in a protest,” she said. It had been a beautiful, sunny day when over two hundred people had converged on Queen’s Park. “Jerry would have added his own flair and passion,” she said. “Many people say they miss him at these events. For them, I guess he’s still an inspiration.”
“Good for you,” he said. “You know, you’re such a caring woman.” He supposed she was unaware how much it bothered him when she spoke so glowingly of her husband. It was not something he would mention as he knew it was petty of him and that she had every right to do so.
Sue merely smiled.
“I have a new puppy,” Hans said. “Takes time to train. And I’ve been worried about one of the horses. There’s been a lot on my mind.” He paused. “And I think I told you Heather has gone back to England. She’s coming back, but it’s a long time to be apart. I miss her.”
Sue flinched. “Oh,” she said. “Is missing her the stuff you mentioned?”
“Yeah.” He sighed.
“I’m having trouble figuring out where to go from here,” she said. “Sometimes with you I’ve felt as if I’m on cloud nine and then I fall through a hole. Like now.”
He found he could not respond because a message started to emerge. “There’s something happening,” he said. “I don’t know what. Hold yourself open for whatever it is.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. All I can tell you is that it doesn’t have anything to do with me. You’ll figure it out.”
She put a slice of lemon in a glass of water. Light from overhead glinted on the golden peel. “I don’t see how whatever it is can have nothing to do with you.”
“I saw a woman this week who wasn’t ready to believe anything I said,” Hans said. “I wondered why she came. At some point, I asked her what her mother was worrying about, why she was hanging around. ‘My mother’s dead,’ she said. I told her I knew that, but she was still worrying about something. She looked at me as if I were crazy. ‘What happened to her teeth?’ I asked. ‘Teeth?’ she repeated, her face white. ‘Yes.’ Then, she sat up straight as if a current of electricity had run through her. ‘How did you know? My mother would never go anywhere without her teeth. Even to bed. But somehow she was buried without them. We found them afterwards. And it’s bothered us ever since.’”
“God, that’s eerie,” Sue said. Although not more eerie than sitting there together.
His face brightened and he took her hands in both of his. “You’ve been such a gift to me,” he said. “I’m grateful. Thank you for offering me your heart.”
“It’s a bruised and battered heart, you know.”
“It’s gone through a lot, I won’t deny that. And I’ve been the cause of some of it. Is it out of the repair shop now?”
“I hope so.”
“Me, too. And I’m sorry to have to disappoint you tonight. I want your friendship and respect, but I can’t go on with the other. Even though it was amazing.” He felt badly when he saw the sadness that flashed across her face, then relaxed when she smiled slightly.
“I suppose it was destined to cr
ash,” she said. “Not because we don’t care about each other.”
“Maybe because we do,” he said.
They sat quietly for a few minutes.
“Sue,” Hans said finally. “Go back as far as you can and look at what comes up. There’s something there you need to grapple with.”
“I’m too tired.”
“Do you know what I’m talking about?”
She sighed.
“It won’t destroy your life as you’ve always imagined. It will give you what you need to go on.”
“Guilt. Pain. Remorse. Sorrow. Isn’t there enough of that already?’
So she does know, he thought. “Yes, there is enough,” he said. “But this isn’t new. It’s already there and it’s worse because it’s never been attended to. It’s like a cyst or a wound that goes on festering.”
“I’ve been happy.”
“You know as well as I do that it’s possible to find happiness even when there are huge pieces of our lives that are painful.”
“Okay,” she sighed. “Okay.”
6.
SUE RETURNED FROM A BRIEF WALK to red flashes on her answering machine. Calls were more rare since Hans had stopped contacting her and she was surprised from a cursory glance at the machine to find at least three of them. The first was a colleague reminding her of a meeting. Then Thomas asking her to call. Another call from Thomas.
“It’s about Florence.”
His voice sounded frantic. Sue had talked to Florence only two or three days earlier. Trying to prepare herself for anything, she drew in a long breath and released it slowly. She had no way of knowing if this call was as urgent as Thomas’s increasingly worried voice made it sound. She did know it was important to get back to him quickly.
“Oh, Sue, I’m so relieved to hear from you,” he said.
“What is it?”
“Florence was in a car accident late yesterday. She’s in hospital in London. Her chances aren’t great.”
“Oh my goodness. What happened?”
“I’m not sure. She was in London. She goes there for appointments for her heart and things like that. She has angina sometimes.”
“Yes, I know.”
“I think someone hit her broadside, turning left. I think she had the right of way.”
“Poor Florence.”
“She keeps asking for you.”
“I’ll go right down,” Sue said, surprised that Florence wanted that. “As soon as I can throw a few things in a bag and get in touch with the principal at my school.”
“I’ll meet you at the hospital,” Thomas said. “I was in London last night and I’m going back now.”
“Could you find me a bed and breakfast there?”
“I’ll check the Internet.”
On the way to London, it was all that Sue could do not to think of what it would mean to have Florence die. Florence was the keeper of all the memories connected to Jerry before Sue knew him. Well, Martin was also. But Florence was the significant link between Jerry and the son he never knew.
When Sue arrived at the hospital, she parked and rushed across the street. At the information desk, she learned that Florence was no longer in intensive care. She spoke to a nurse on the floor who told her it now seemed likely that Florence would recover.
“Don’t stay too long,” the nurse said. “She tires easily. Or, if you do stay, sit quietly with her.”
The moment Sue walked into the room, the older woman’s eyes lit up. She was covered with bruises and bandages and her left arm was in a cast. “I’m so glad you’re here, my dear,” Florence murmured. “This is such stupidity. The drivers nowadays are an outrage.”
“Yes,” Sue said, grateful Florence could still say so.
“I don’t remember if I told you that I’ve made you executor of my will. The main beneficiary is Thomas. Not that I have so much to leave, but Jerry set up bank accounts in Thomas’s and my name that I promised to see went to Thomas. I have everything written down and in a safety deposit box in Chatham. Thomas has its number. I can’t remember it right now. The key is in my jewellery box.” She dropped off to sleep as soon as she finished her sentence and slept for an hour before she woke up again. Sue moved back to the side of the bed from the window where she had stood for a while staring out at the sky.
“There’s something I want to know,” Florence said. “I want you to tell me why you never had children.”
Sue was so surprised she took a step backwards, almost as if the words had a physical impact. “You’re too ill,” she said. “You need to rest. Why are you asking me this now?”
“Because I’ve meant to. Because I know there’s something there you haven’t talked about and I think it’s time, my dear.”
Sue looked down at the floor. The question was so unexpected. “I did have a child once,” she said. Her eyes were suddenly full of tears she could not control. She had never said this aloud before. She had willed herself not to. “I was sixteen,” she said. “My mother made me give it up for adoption. I never could face having another.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“And you never told Jerry?”
“No.”
Florence was silent. She might have fallen asleep again, but when Sue looked at her, she was fully awake, her eyes unfathomable.
“I didn’t feel as if I was concealing her. I never even saw the child. I wasn’t allowed to. I know it was a girl and that she was taken from me and given to someone in an adjoining room. My mother told me I was to forget all about her. We never talked about her again. I had to go away from home for the last five months before the birth, to a place where no one knew me, so no one in the town would find out. It was a shameful thing in those days and you carry the shame of it, you know. You carry it forever.”
“I know, my dear.”
Sue wondered if Florence had had a similar experience, but the older woman was drifting off again. As she did, Florence reached out and held Sue’s hand. When Thomas arrived, Sue told him the older woman was doing better. And that Florence had told her about the will in the safety deposit box in Chatham.
He bent over and whispered to Florence. When he stood up, his face was puckered from holding back tears. They went out into the hall just outside the room.
“I hope she makes it,” he said. “I pray she does.”
“I think I told you the nurse said she would likely recover. She will be fine, Thomas.”
He calmed down then. “Do you know, she wanted to talk to me about having a baby? Can you believe it?” he said. “She wanted to tell me things I would want to tell my children as they grew up. About my father. Often, she seemed to talk gibberish. It was as if she wanted to get it all said in case she died.”
Sue reached out to hug him.
They went back into the room and sat quietly beside the bed until the nurse came to tell them visiting hours were over. As they walked slowly out of the hospital, Thomas commented that he had found a place for her to stay. “I’ll take my car and you can follow in yours.” Then he would leave and go back to Stratford.
“I can be here in an hour if you need me,” he said.
“Yes, of course.”
She rang the bell of a large brick bungalow on the bank of the river. When a woman came to the door, Thomas waved and drove away. The woman showed Sue to a room downstairs at ground level that looked out over the water. There was a breeze blowing the waves into white crests. She wondered if there would be a storm, but the sky was blue with only an occasional cloud.
“How long will you be staying?” the woman asked.
“One night. Perhaps two.”
“I’ll give you the rate for a hospital visitor rather than a tourist.”
“I appreciate that. Thanks.”
When the woman left, Sue closed the do
or and sat in a chair overlooking the water. She thought about what Florence had said. Hans and Florence had both known there was something buried even without her telling them. Neither would judge her, she knew that, knowing the even greater problem now would be if she continued to ignore the most significant event of her life. This was a truth she had known and yet been able to ignore. Suddenly, it was incomprehensible. Most of all, she wished she had told Jerry. She could not imagine now what their marriage would have been like had she done so or had Jerry told her about Thomas.
And what about her baby now? What could she do about her? All she knew was that she had carried a life inside her that was taken away when she was still a child herself. That there had never been permission until this moment to acknowledge that child or to acknowledge that something in her had died with that birth. Sue felt she had been robbed.
There was a tap on her door and she stood up and went toward it. The woman was just outside with a cup of tea on a tray. Her copper hair gleamed in the light, much as Sue’s had when she was younger. Although her eyes were never the clear blue this woman’s were. She looked like an angel, Sue thought.
“If you’d like a swim in the morning, you’re welcome to use the pool,” the woman said.
“Thank you.” Sue thought she would want to get to the hospital the moment she finished her morning coffee, but she appreciated the offer.
“Did you bring a bathing suit?”
“No. I didn’t think of it.” As far as she was concerned, it was likely too cool.
“I’ll leave one for you. You’re about my size. I’ll get it for you,” the woman said, already halfway across the room.
Sue watched the retreating figure of the woman, thinking she was around the age of the daughter Sue had never seen.
*
That night she dreamed about the foetus in the pond again. A white uniform towered over her, denying her the sight of her own baby.
“It’s better that you don’t, my dear,” the disembodied voice of the nurse said.
Waking to a dark, unfamiliar room, Sue wondered, better for whom? It was better that the boy not know, she had been told. Indeed, he never had known he made a child, that out there somewhere was a baby they had made together. Sue had stopped dating him as soon as she missed her first period. His family moved away the next year to another mining town, a new job for his father, a familiar tale in the world of mining. Before he left, he never asked her why she was gone for more than five months. He never talked to her at all. She used to hear about him from people who worked in that other town. That was how she learned that he had gone away to university the same year she did, but in a different city. It was not fair that she had had to go through all of it alone, whereas he never even knew it happened. Or so she had thought at the time. Told there was nothing he could have done about it anyway, she had known that had she told him, her mother would have punished her somehow. Nor would she ever have been forgiven.
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